IOR award goes to Asgard licensees

The Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD) has awarded its improved oil recovery (IOR) prize for 2016 to the licensees of the Asgard field in the Norwegian Sea for their subsea wet gas compressor.

NPD said on Tuesday that the installation of the compressor will yield almost 50 million standard cubic meters (306 million barrels of oil equivalent) in additional gas and condensate.

The Asgard field licensees are Statoil as the operator with 34.57 percent, Petoro with 35.69, Eni with 14.82, Total with 7.68, and ExxonMobil with 7.24. NPD said that they have followed through all the way from initial concept to decision and implementation.

The gas compressor is the first of its kind in the world and has been operational from October 2015. It stands in 300 meters of water and covers an area similar to a football pitch. Gas is recovered from reservoirs 2,500 meters beneath the seabed. Testing of subsea installations on Draugen, Troll, Tordis and Tyrihans in 1994-2009 were necessary steps towards the realization of this technology.

The award was presented during the opening ceremony for the ONS 2016 exhibition and conference in Stavanger. NPD director general, Bente Nyland, said: “Achieving such interaction is perhaps especially important today. So is keeping world-class, dynamic engineering clusters.”

Using this technology on Asgard is expected to yield 49 million scm in additional gas and condensate from the Midgard and Mikkel reservoirs. The recovery factor is expected to rise from 71 to 86 percent for the former, and from 46 to 68 percent for the latter.

Nyland said that recovering all commercial resources is part of the each licensee’s work commitment. She said: “That naturally involves risk, so we acclaim technology development and pilot projects.

“When we see that these succeed, as has been the case with Asgard, we must recognize the inventiveness and boldness displayed by the companies. They have taken an investment risk, and can now reap the reward.”

“At the same time, this shows that the profitability of a field is determined when it ceases production, and not by current oil and gas prices.”

The government also contributed through its support for basic research provided by the Demo 2000 program in the early 2000s. Statoil began testing in the K-lab at Kårstø in 2008 when it tried out a full-scale model under water.